Ravenous Invasive Worm Now in U.S.

Researchers have found the New Guinea flatworm, one of the world’s most invasive species, in Florida, putting native ecosystems at serious risk.

Written byBob Grant

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The New Guinea flatworm (Platydemus manokwari)IMAGE, PIERRE GROS - PEERJMainland Florida is an inviting home to many invasive species: Burmese pythons, wild boars, and Old World climbing ferns, to name a few, wreak havoc in the state’s ecosystems. And now, scientists have found another troubling invader, the New Guinea flatworm (Platydemus manokwari), taking advantage of Florida’s comfortable climes.

The arrival of the New Guinea flatworm, which was reported by an international team of researchers in PeerJ this week (June 23), is especially bad news. The species establishes itself quickly in new areas and feeds voraciously on native snails. “Once the New Guinea flatworm arrives in a new territory, and providing the conditions are right, it reproduces quickly,” study coauthor Jean-Lou Justine of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris told The Huffington Post. “It quickly adapts itself to predate on local snails and other invertebrates.”

Justine and his team showed that the New Guinea flatworm has also turned up in New Caledonia, Puerto Rico, Singapore, the Solomon Islands, and other small Pacific Islands to which it is not native. But finding the invasive ...

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Meet the Author

Bob Grant
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
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